It is great to have friends that know a lot and can give you a ton of good advice and tips. I am always grateful when somebody tells me how I can make things better!

Couple of days ago A. showed me how to exercise Barley out on the trail instead of the arena and boy! can thinks be simple. You just get the desire to smack your forehead with your palm and think “Why the hack didn’t I think of that?”.

Keep it simple! Just another voice in my head! Dayum…if I could recall every voice just when I would need to.

A. and I did tons of stuff outside. Sidepass down a hill:

Lope from stand still (although this is a little hard to capture on a picture):

Step ups (you can see the series of pictures at the end), walking over big logs, climbing down a sandy hill, stopping down hill (this is not the hill I am talking about, but you’ll get the gist):

Backing up three steps up the hill, bending around trees, go through mudd (yeah, this is actually necessary for a horse that does not want to get his paws dirty!) and lots of more stuff.

What I like about doing this out on the trail is that it does not get so intense. In the arena you do one exercise after the other, on the trail you do an exercise then you walk on to the next obstacle, maybe ten minutes later you do the next exercise. In the end our horses ears were completely tuned in on us, waiting what we would do next. It was quite obvious that they had fun!

A. told me yesterday that she was riding out with another friend and Barley got to see them. He was in his pasture and they were couple of hundred meters away, but he started galloping in circles, trying to raise their attentention, head and ears up and was so utterly disappointed and upset that he wasn’t able to go with them on their ride.

I understand that he thought the day before was great, doing all the fun stuff outside with his girlfriend Tiff.

Our way back home was a 20-minute ride where they could cool down and relax. Back home in the stable his back and hint muscles were like jelly when I petted him. That’s the way I like it! Shrimp got his Mash as a treat after his shower and was a mellow and happy horse. Long rides, concentrated work and wet saddle pads proved to be the perfect thing again!

What happens when a horsemad Ould Wagon moves from Cork to Provence with 2 horses, 2 dogs and a Long Suffering Husband? Why, she gets a third dog, discovers Natural Horsemanship à la Française and starts writing short stories, of course...